


With Oversight

by PhantomEngineer



Series: Butterfly Wings [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 14:23:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14546637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhantomEngineer/pseuds/PhantomEngineer
Summary: After Hogwarts Lily finds a life for herself. It may not be perfect, but it's hers and it'll do.





	With Oversight

“Hi Sev,” Lily said as she entered her house, turning on the lights. Sev said nothing, merely coking his head at her in curiosity, his long ears flopping round his face. Petunia had laughed herself silly when Lily had brought home a small, black rabbit and named it Sev. Then she had seemed somewhat horrified, as if the realisation of rabbits being potential prey to wolves seemed to sink in, and she’d gone awfully silent. Lily hadn’t really cared. In some ways, she thought that Severus might have appreciated the ghoulishness of it all, even if she was entirely unsure of his opinion on rabbits. A black cat would have suited a witch more, but Lily was done being a witch.

She opened the spacious cage that she kept him in, letting him hop out. She picked him up and buried her face in his soft, black fur. For a brief moment, she held him up, his nose twitching against hers. Then she set him down, to have free reign over her home while she powered up her computer to write. She had a plot hole to fix, and a character to develop. As always, there were strange boys with dark eyes haunting her, with all sorts of magical adventures awaiting them. 

She hadn’t gone back to Hogwarts, but had instead gone to college in the muggle world. She’d become strangely close to Eileen, appreciating the older woman guidance on abandoning the magical world. And yet at the same time there were whole sections of their lives that they kept silent about, with Severus a name that was never mentioned. Maybe one day it would be, but that day was yet to come. In a way she thought she might have helped Eileen too, providing a practical distraction even if the reason behind everything was the one thing she was seeking distraction from. 

She was still incredibly close to Petunia, far closer than she might have imagined to be possible when she was a teenager. Their lives had diverged and they had become completely different people, but they were still tied together. Eileen and Petunia were the only people who knew that she had once been a witch. She’d gone to university, unlike Petunia. Petunia had married and had children, unlike her. They were sisters, close friends and completely different from each other. Lily wrote novels for a living, something that didn’t make her rich but made her happy. Petunia was a housewife, with a kind if slightly shy husband.

“You could name a child after him,” Petunia had suggested once, but Lily knew that she wouldn’t be having children. Maybe had she found herself with a man that desperately wanted them she might have reconsidered, but she had never desired them particularly for herself. She definitely didn’t want the trouble of watching them for magic, for worrying about the consequences of allowing them to be swept off to Hogwarts, even if she had no idea what the magical world was like. She was like Eileen, following in her footsteps. She still had her wand and still used the occasional spell, but never enough that anyone would ever realise she did. She had no idea if the world she had left behind had changed from the one she had known, or if it was the same. Even had it changed, she had no way of knowing if it would be for the better or for the worse. She could vaguely remember rumours of war and a man with a strange name when she had been at school, but nothing more. She didn’t care anymore. 

Petunia had, during her first pregnancy, commented that Severus was a good name in its own way. She had named her firstborn Harry though, which was a far more normal name. Lily hadn’t expected her to name her son after a boy she had never even liked. So Lily had named her pet after him. She loved her little Sev-Bun, who she could spill all of her secrets to and he would never tell anyone. He would just snuffle quietly, washing his ears with his paws. He didn’t mind when she drew her wand and cast spells, though she didn’t do that all that often. She had never realised before that rabbits could give such quizzical looks. It was always just small spells, ones that saved her time, like cleaning or moving heavy things. Minor tasks that magic made easier. The sort of thing that she would wonder about how serious a relationship had to be before she admitted to her abilities, conscious that it was both something she felt was best not to hide but also vaguely aware that there were laws against telling muggles. 

It made her wonder what things would have been like, had Severus not died. She presumed they would have graduated Hogwarts together. She had been bright, but he had been far more absorbed in the intricacies of magic. They would probably have found jobs doing something magical. They would hopefully have still been good friends, maybe even more. Realistically, Lily thought it most likely that they would have been more, that had he not died they would have fixed all their teenage insecurities that had been pushing them apart and through that fallen together. She didn’t like to think too much about what ifs, as it only hurt, but sometimes they came to her unbidden.

It had been hard to readjust to the muggle world, which was upsetting in a way, as it was the world she had grown up in. She had managed though, creating a good life for herself where she was at peace. Sometimes she wished things had been different, but mostly she was just content. To an extent, she was a foreigner in the land she had been born in, but whenever she looked back on her time at Hogwarts all she could think was that then she too had been a foreigner. There everyone had known, and she had been unwanted by so many. In the muggle world it was only her who knew that she didn’t quite fit, something she could conceal with relative ease, the barrier that existed was one only she knew of. It wasn’t perfect, but she was satisfied.


End file.
